Thanks for your two kindest letters. I shall write you again another day,—this is only my answer to one of your two letters; the other I still owe you for.
Best wishes and regards to you always.
Lafcadio Hearn.
TO ELLWOOD HENDRICK
Kōbe, December, 1894.
Dear Hendrick,—So it was you that sent me “Trilby”—the magical thing! I never knew till the Spencer came, and Kipling’s “Jungle Book.” And the joke is that I thanked another man for the gift of “Trilby,” and the beast never let on. And I wrote a two and one-half column review of “Trilby” to please him. Oh! you rascal! why didn’t you tell me? Love to you for “Trilby.” ...
Glad you liked my first book on Japan. The Tribune essay vexed me.... The curious fact of the article was the statement about the influence of the decadents and of Verlaine being “apparent.” Never read a line of Verlaine in my life,—and only know enough of the decadent school to convince me that the principle is scientifically wrong, and that to study the stuff is mere waste of time.
I am writing one article a day for 100 yen a month. Exchange is so low now that the 100 represents something less than 50 in American money. And my eyes, or eye, giving out. Curious!—cold seriously affects my remnant of sight. If I had a few thousand I should go to a hot climate during the winter months. Heat gives me good vision. Even a Japanese hot bath temporarily restores clearness of sight....
Of course, we shall never see each other again in this world. And what is the use of being unkind—after all? Life to us literary folk—small and great—is so short, and we are never in competition, like business men who must compete—what is the use of meanness? I suppose there must be some use. The effect is certainly to convince a man of “fourty-four” that the less he has to do with his fellow men the better,—or, at least, that the less he has to do with the so-called “cultured” the better....
The other day you told me of some queer changes in your inner life wrought by the influences of the outer. In my case the changes are very unpleasant. I can’t feel towards men generally any longer as I used to—I feel, in short, a little misanthropic. The general facts seem to be that all realities of relations between men are of self-interest in the main; that the pleasures of those relations are illusions—dependent upon youth, power, position, etc., for degree of intensity. No man, as a general rule, shows his soul to another man; he shows it only to a woman,—and then only with the assurance that she won’t give him away. As a matter of fact, she can’t:—the Holy Ghost takes care of that! No woman unveils herself to another woman—only to a man; and what she unveils he cannot betray. He can only talk of her body, if he is brute enough to wish to: the inner being, of which he has had some glimpses, can be pictured only in a language which he cannot use. But what a fighting masked-ball the whole thing is!